Putting God to the Test

[FutureAndAHope]

I'm glad that you are happy and have a wife. However, as there is no empirical evidence that prayer does anything (in fact, there are numerous studies that show prayer is at best a placebo), I think you are giving poor advice on how to deal with a given situation.

Prayer has worked for me on numerous occassions. See http://www.futureandahope.net for the recorded examples. As for placebo studies, you can't just get together a group of Christians and get them pray. This might sound boastful, but most Christians don't have the gift of healing, and many Christian people respected by community have little respect by God. Many mainstream faiths are full of powerless Christians with sin in their lives. God only allows the sinless, and faithful to perform miracles, and there are few Christians who fit that bill. I don't mind the idea of a study, but I would be very selective in who I chose to take part. There are plenty of examples of divine healing recorded see http://www.wcdn.org/wcdn_eng/case/divine_case_e.asp it records cases of divine healing. Just becasue a few studies have shown prayer to be ineffective does not mean prayer does not work, the way the studies are set up are flawed. Every christian probably believes God can heal, but only a select few can. You need to source people who have the gift. I know some who do have that gift, and they have even seen paralized people healed.